Pakistan’s solar boom and the challenge for the grid ^{CEFR B1}

Since 2023 Pakistan has experienced severe annual heatwaves that have repeatedly strained and sometimes collapsed the national energy grid. Rising tariffs and frequent outages pushed households and small businesses toward rooftop and small-scale solar as a more reliable source of power.

Pakistan imported 16 gigawatts of solar panels from China in the 2024 fiscal year, more than triple the 4.9 GW imported the year before. By mid-2025 cumulative imports had reached about 36 GW, a volume roughly equal to three-quarters of the country’s installed power-generation capacity. This rapid uptake has made distributed solar one of the fastest-growing electricity sources.

China’s involvement in Pakistan’s energy sector through the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor has a mixed legacy: of 21 CPEC energy projects, eight are coal-fired plants that helped meet shortages but raise environmental and financial concerns. Officials have begun to call new plans "Green CPEC."

Cheap Chinese panels and a surge in battery shipments have let households run fans, pumps and small appliances and store night power. Pakistan lacks domestic manufacturing, however, and a 10 percent tax on panels in 2024 did not slow demand. Analysts warn that rising self-generation could reduce utility revenue and displace billions of kilowatt-hours of grid sales, even as officials note a large rise in net-metering output but say many homes still draw evening power from the grid.